Essays

Daniel Arbino is the Librarian for US Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas’s Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. He specializes in Caribbean and U.S. Latino literature with a concentration on cultural production from the African Diaspora. His publications can be found in Caribe, Sargasso, Journal of Caribbean Literatures, and the Publication of the Afro-Latin American Research Association.

Núria Sabaté is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Centre College. Her fields of specialization are 19th-21th-century Latin American and Caribbean studies with a focus on the literature of Argentina. Her book Muchas Patagonias. Aproximaciones espaciales a la literatura del sur argentino (antología crítica) was published by Espacio Hudson in 2017.

Trevor Boffone is a Houston-based scholar, educator, writer, dramaturg, producer, and the founder of the 50 Playwrights Project. He is a member of the National Steering Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons. Trevor has a Ph.D. in Latin@ Theatre and Literature from the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. His first book project, Eastside Latinidad: Josefina López, Community, and Social Change in Los Angeles,examines the textual and performative strategies of contemporary Latin@ theatermakers based in Boyle Heights. He is co-editing an anthology of Latinx plays from the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Encuentro 2014 (under contract with Northwestern University Press).

Poetry

Born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Alberto Quero holds a BA in Literature and Linguistics, a Masters in Venezuelan literature and a Doctorate in Humanities from the University of Zulia, Venezuela. He has published six books of short stories and a book of poems in Spanish. He has written poems in English, which have been published in England, Canada and the USA. He has been a Writer-in-residence at the Maison de la poésie de Trois-Rivières and has also published many peer-reviewed articles for university journals. He is a member of the Iberian American Writers’ Association, the International Writers’ Parliament in Colombia and the Semiotics Association of Venezuela. Since 2014, he is the volunteer literary reporter for Latin America at “Literary News”, a radio show aired on CKCU 93.1, a FM station which belongs to Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada).

Veronica Corral is a dynamic and versatile performer, public speaker, library specialist and educator who enjoys working with audiences of all ages. She is one of the founders of Connections that Count, considered at ALA (American Library Association) and Reforma, as one of the most successful library early literacy initiatives for Spanish families. She has written reviews of children’s bilingual books for the School Library Journal and Ventana Magica Magazine. She has starred in various plays such as Mama Goose, ¡Doctor, Doctor! La Radionovela _A Radio Soap Opera and a staged reading of La Casa de Bernarda Alba. For the last 10 years she has worked for The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library as a bilingual specialist where she shares her love of literacy with children and adults alike.

Seres Jaime Magaña was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He has a bachelors in English from The University of Rio Grande Valley. His work has been published in the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Boundless Anthology 2015-2016-2017, South Texas College Interstice 2015-2016-2017, Art Young’s Good Morning and Garbanzo Literary Magazine Jan 2017 Issue, the Acentos Review Feb 2017 Issue, and The Raving Press ‘Bad Hombres and Nasty Women’. He is currently a host for Saturday’s Open Mic at Luna Coffee House in McAllen, Texas, where he welcomes poets, musicians, and comedians to share their work. Seres enjoys reading his poetry and short stories around the Rio Grande Valley where he currently lives with his family. For more of his writing check out his page seresjaimemagana.wordpress.com, look for him on

FaceBook @seresjaimemaganaauthor, and to reach him you can email him at

Yvette Corredor, Poet from Bogotá, Colombia. Graduated in Bibliotecología y Archivística (Library Sciences and Archives Science) from La Salle University. Organized the José Asunción Silva Poetry Library, Bogotá. Medical Librarian from Univerdade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, Regional Library of Medicine. Head Librarian at the National Cancer Institute, Bogotá, for 19 years. Eafit University Library, Medellin, Head of the areas of Social Sciences and Engineering. Director of Teleantioquia Archive and Documentation Center, Medellin. Industrial Santander University Library, Bucaramanga, in charge of the areas of Social Sciences and Engineering. After coming to the United States 18 years ago, she has lived in Charlotte NC. Her poem “Aquí y allá” ewas published in Label Me Latina/o in Fall 2016. Her work has been part of events such as Segundo Festival Las Américas: Mitos, Leyendas y Poemas, Celebración del Día del Idioma, Tradiciones de Charlotte, II Festival Yo Soy Quixote, Cuentos para Gabo II, ARTE LATINO NOW 2017, Power of Word and the Charm of Voice: Poetry, Storytelling, Songs.

Short Story

J.M. Persánch graduated with two BAs in English and Hispanic Philology from the University of Cádiz, where he later received his first Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies. He also studied at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and was an instructor and non-degree seeking student at Amherst College in the United States. He received a second Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Western Oregon University, an Editor of Nuestra Andalucía, a reviewer for several academic journals and the Founding Director and Presenter of the Persona, Personae Interview Series Project. He specializes in contemporary film and literature in the fields of both U.S. Latino studies and Peninsular Studies.

Miriam García is from Guadalajara Jalisco, México. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and studied different writing courses at the Writers School SOGEM (Sociedad General de Escritores Mexicanos), Guadalajara. She wrote for the local cultural magazine “Transeuntes” published by the Sociedad de Geografia del Estado de Jalisco. Some of her stories were published in the newspaper Ocho Columnas and her work was included in two different editions of the anthology Caleidoscopio, published by SOGEM and presented during the Feria Internacional del Libro of Guadalajara in 2009 and 2010. In 2015, she published her first book Dulce Amor Funesto and in 2016, she participated in the presentation of the Vagina Monologues.

She’ve been living in the US since 2013. She lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and their cat.

Scott Russell Duncan, a.k.a. Scott Duncan-Fernandez, recently completed The Ramona Diary of SRD, a memoir of growing up Chicano-Anglo and a fantastical tour reclaiming the myths of Spanish California. Scott’s fiction involves the mythic, the surreal, the abstract, in other words, the weird. Scott received his MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California where he now lives and writes. He is an assistant editor at Somos en escrito. His work has appeared in Border Senses, Label Me Latina/o, Gemini Magazine, Somos en escrito, Diagram, Communion Literary Magazine, Ofi Press, Williwaw Anthology of the Marvelous, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Tiny Donkey and translated into Spanish in Canibaal. See more about his work on Scott’s website scottrussellduncan.com

Juan Ochoa is a Mexican born in America. His home is a twenty-minute walk from the Rio Grande. Ochoa has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Pan American. He is the author of Mariguano A Novel (Texas Review Press, 2013). Ochoa currently teaches freshman English at South Texas College in McAllen TX.

Born from water and waves in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Venezuela and the U.S., Mariel Masque concocted a hybrid literary style, Lucid Surrealism (LS), where multiple realities coexist. LS blends creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction to frame her Caribbean Mestiza queer surreal world and uses Spanglish, Spanish and English to weave her cuentos. Mariel served on the editorial board of two Latina lesbian magazines: Esto No Tiene Nombre and Conmoción. Anthologized in the U.S. and Canada and a featured reader at various national venues, Mariel recently read at the prestigious University of Arizona Poetry Center Edge Series. Samples of her writing are available at Poet and Muse e-press (http://www.poetandmuse.com/). Mariel is a member of the Latina writers group Mujeres Que Escriben and lives in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona, con sus gatos Magia y Oráculo.

Creative Non-Fiction

Rafael Osuba (Puerto Rican) cultural producer, visual artist, storyteller, author, arts advocate and self-proclaimed Quixote, has been an artist for as long as he can remember. He learned at a very young age that through his talent he could engage people and create relationships. He says “Art is all around us; it is up to us to see its beauty.” For nearly 30 years the arts have been the vehicle he uses to stay connected to his culture. “Every person, drawing, painting, sculpture, song, dance, food and literary work has a story behind it. Capturing a feeling, a memory or expression and sharing it with the world is where the magic lies.” Rafael A. Osuba is the Founder of the El Quixote Festival and the Artistic Director of Artist Studio Project. Married to his best friend Michelle they have three children, Rafael Jr., Gabrielle, and Leilani and they live in Raleigh.

Patricia Magdalena Redlin is the author of over 50 short stories, several chapters each of three novels, one memoir, and most of two other memoirs. She has spent much of her life immersing herself in various cultures and languages. She is half-Mexican/half-American and in addition to spending most summers as a child staying with relatives in Mexico, she also lived there for a year as a teen, attending high school. She lived for a summer in France and has a BA degree in French, as well as an MBA in international marketing and management. She lived and worked in Germany for four years. Patricia is fluent in Spanish, German and French. She also speaks Italian proficiently and can read Portuguese BUT don’t speak Portuguese to her. She will not understand you and will try to say she doesn’t speak Portuguese…and you won’t understand her. Patricia has worked in international advertising and marketing, web content and promotional writing, sales, project management, airport customer service supervision, travel management, university extension program and course management, and television station marketing She has been self-employed as a translator, editor, and proofreader for all her languages for more than six years.